Attorney at Law Magazine Phoenix - August 2012

Tod Lee Stewart

Daria Morgen 0000-00-00 00:00:00

Tod Stewart, founding partner of Phoenix-based personal injury law firm, Stewart & Torgersen, remembers the exact moment when he realized his true calling.
When he was twelve years old, Stewart saw the 1973 movie about the struggles of a first year law student, “The Paper Chase.” It was then that he knew that he wanted to be a lawyer.
Never wavering from his principal goal, Stewart received his Juris Doctorate from Ohio Northern University in 1996 after receiving his B.S. from Arizona State University in 1993. He served as the associate editor for the Pharmacy Law Journal, and won first place and “Best Oralist” award at the 17th Annual Administrative Law Moot Court Competition.
The first available job opportunity was as a personal injury lawyer, and he took it. He never had anticipated that he would become a personal injury attorney.
“I had an infant son and needed the work badly,” he said of the early days of his career.
As fate would have it however, Stewart was precisely where he needed to be.
“It turned out be the exact area I would have wanted to practice in; I would not want to practice in any other area of law,” he said. “It has given me an opportunity to help some amazing people and their families.”
Stewart feels that the propaganda foisted on the public by wealthy insurance companies and corporations paints personal injury attorneys in an unfair light.
“It is important to remember that personal injury attorneys fight to protect the constitutional rights of those who have suffered at the hands of another’s negligence,” he said. “We try to make this world a safer place by holding wrongdoers responsible.”
Recently Stewart and his firm were charged with preserving some semblance of a future for five young women. The oldest was just 19 when they lost their mother and only caretaker in a mining accident.
“The mother literally carried rocks and sorted them in order to make bare bones wages,” Stewart said. “The safety at the mine was deplorable and she was killed when a defective loader crushed her. The adult daughter not only lost her mother but now she took the place of her mother for her four young sisters.”
Stewart & Torgersen was able to make the owner of the mine compensate that family for the loss of their mother.
Recently, the firm received an invitation from one of the daughters that was accepted into a pre-med program at the University of Arizona.
“Our hope is to bring prestige back to the profession,” Stewart said. “I still maintain the idealism that I carried into law school that we, as lawyers, have the opportunity to change our world for the better.”